Iraq: Living with the enemey. Sad story of a youth murdered by neighbors.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- I first met Abu Wissam at the foot of his son's shallow grave. Never will he be able to erase the last image he has of his son's body.

"He was cut to pieces," he said. "His hands and feet were chopped off. And he was decapitated."

For a long time, Iraqis would say that it was "outsiders" that were carrying out such atrocities. The truth that is so hard to accept for many is that that often was not the case.

Iraqis turned on each other, neighbors slaughtered neighbors, friends betrayed one another. It was the sheer degradation of society on a shocking and utterly petrifying scale.

Abu Wissam's son Raed was a 25-year-old business school student. His fiance says that one day he got a phone call from a college friend asking to meet him. Little did she know that it was a plot to lure him out of the house and that it would be their last goodbye.